Chapter Summaries

Lian Xiangyu clashed with Shen Dong'er over their forgotten past while Zhu Nian tried to keep their team together. After the trio left the Infirmary, Peng Zhen filled a thermos and drank water there, and a bell began ringing in the corridor as six o'clock approached.

• Lian Xiangyu realized Shen Dong'er knew him from their past relationship, though he could not remember her.
• Shen Dong'er and Zhu Nian argued over Lian Xiangyu, and Zhu Nian urged the team to set aside their personal conflicts.
• Lian Xiangyu left the Infirmary, followed by Shen Dong'er and Zhu Nian, while Su Bai stayed behind holding the kitten.
• Peng Zhen entered the Infirmary without acknowledging Su Bai, filled his thermos, drank a glass of water, and left.
• A faint bell began ringing in the corridor shortly before six o'clock.

Su Bai investigated the Lorimaris Hotel lobby and found more copies of the printed rules, suggesting someone had planted them throughout the hotel. He discovered a marked-up sheet warning players not to eat or drink, leaving the rules’ reliability in doubt.

• As a bell rang through the hotel near six, Su Bai walked through the corridors in his maid’s uniform with Little Black Cat beside him.
• Su Bai descended to the lobby and passed two unfamiliar attendants whose vacant eyes seemed not to notice him.
• Su Bai examined the plaster statues and found two more sheets displaying the same three rules.
• Little Black Cat led Su Bai to a sheet hidden beneath a statue, where he found the first and third rules crossed out in blood and a warning: “Don’t eat! Don’t drink water!”

Su Bai investigated the Bar and Buffet Restaurant after reading a warning not to eat or drink, but found the attendants missing and the restaurant stocked with meat. Little Fire sensed exceptionally delicious corruption in the food, leaving Su Bai to suspect the restaurant was dangerous.

• Su Bai recalled that Peng Zhen had gone to the Infirmary for water despite the Bar offering unlimited drinks.
• Su Bai searched the Bar and Buffet Restaurant and found Number Three, Number Four, and Number Five absent.
• Su Bai inspected the three meat dishes in the restaurant but had no interest in eating them.
• Little Fire appeared and craved the food, leading Su Bai to suspect the restaurant contained intense corruption.

Su Bai used Little Fire to burn the filth inside three meat dishes, then found an old notebook written by a player who had entered the Lorimas Grand Hotel three years earlier. The notebook described a Nightmare Game that differed sharply from the one Su Bai and the other players were facing, and revealed the hotel's origin story.

• Little Fire consumed the filth in the three meat dishes, leaving charred remains that released a foul stench.
• Su Bai wondered whether the meat came from something other than ordinary livestock after Little Fire's reaction to it.
• Su Bai found a chestnut-colored notebook bearing the Lorimas Grand Hotel emblem on the bar counter.
• Su Bai read that the notebook's author had been a human player in a Nightmare Game at the hotel three years earlier.
• Su Bai discovered that the earlier game's rules and events differed from those of the current game, and read that the hotel had been renamed after a blonde girl named Lorimas.

Su Bai read an old recorder’s account of the Lorimas Grand Hotel, including its tragic history and rules that contradicted the rules given to the current players. After hearing agonized cries from the upper floors, he headed toward the stairs and encountered the sound of people coming down.

• The recorder described Lorimas marrying the hotel’s owner, after which the hotel closed and became a place locals feared.
• Su Bai read the recorder’s three rules: Lorimas searched for her husband after midnight, players should not look for those she took, and white roses could ease the effects of eating or drinking hotel food.
• Su Bai found that the recorder had documented past events and players, then hid the notebook when screams interrupted his reading.
• Su Bai returned to the lobby disguised as an attendant and asked Number One about the cries and the notebook, but Number One stayed silent.
• Su Bai approached the stairs as voices came from the stairwell, while Little Black Cat slipped into the shadows.

Su Bai overheard Peng Zhen admit that he and his allies had destroyed several server Dolls and deceived the Players with fabricated rules. Realizing the Players were trapped in a hotel controlled by Peng Zhen’s faction, Su Bai decided to secretly give them information and use the conflict to search for Lorimas.

• Peng Zhen came downstairs while speaking to a mysterious person on a bulky telephone and mistook Su Bai for a deaf, blind Doll.
• Peng Zhen said his side had destroyed the troublesome Dolls in the Bar and the Buffet Restaurant and dismissed Number Eight as harmless.
• Su Bai concluded that Peng Zhen’s group had fabricated the hotel rules, lured the thirty Players into the hotel, and wanted them to eat corrupted meat for an unknown purpose.
• Su Bai reasoned that Peng Zhen’s faction might be vulnerable because it had resorted to deception rather than confronting all thirty Players directly.
• Su Bai decided to pass information to the Players without revealing himself, hoping their fight with Peng Zhen’s group would let him search for Lorimas unnoticed.

Su Bai deduced that Peng Zhen and others had seized control of the Lorimas Grand Hotel and were using its food and drink to pursue an unknown goal, leaving him to investigate alone. The next morning, the players heard ringing that might signal they could leave their rooms, while a mysterious visitor knocked on Lian Xiangyu's door.

• Su Bai concluded that the hotel's rules were designed to make players consume suspicious food and water, and suspected the captors had no intention of letting anyone escape.
• The morning ringing prompted the players to wonder whether they could leave their rooms, but they waited for someone else to test it first.
• Lian Xiangyu, Shen Dong'er, and Zhu Nian discussed going downstairs to eat, and Zhu Nian offered to scout alone after explaining that she wanted to return to her ill grandfather.
• Shen Dong'er felt compelled to stop Zhu Nian from leaving alone, but rhythmic knocks sounded at the door and interrupted her.
• After the knocking continued, the three heard something land heavily on the floor outside.

Su Bai searched for a trustworthy ordinary player to receive his notebook, using Little Black Cat to identify Peng Zhen’s likely rooms and meditating while he waited. After hearing Lian Xiangyu, Shen Dong’er, and Zhu Nian next door, he decided they were the best candidates to receive it.

• Su Bai had Little Black Cat follow Peng Zhen and learned that Peng Zhen likely stayed in Room 422 while Rooms 204 and 311 held accomplices.
• Su Bai waited in the Infirmary and meditated, while Little Black Cat watched the hotel’s sixth floor.
• A cloaked figure rang a bell as it glided along the fifth-floor hallway, and Su Bai watched it through the Infirmary peephole.
• Su Bai overheard Lian Xiangyu, Shen Dong’er, and Zhu Nian in the next room and chose them as the best candidates to receive his notebook.

As the players debated the hotel’s rules, Su Bai used the distraction to reach the sealed sixth floor. He burned through its lock and opened the door, where he heard a warning about the dead Lorimas weeping.

• Lian Xiangyu questioned whether the hotel’s printed rules could be trusted, and Cheng Xun agreed that the sheet seemed out of place.
• Lian Xiangyu handed Cheng Xun the notebook and gathered the players to hear his analysis, drawing attention away from Su Bai.
• Su Bai climbed toward the sixth floor while the players discussed the notebook in the lobby.
• Su Bai burned through the intricate lock securing the sixth-floor door and pushed it open.
• Su Bai heard soft sobbing and the warning, “Stay away from the sixth floor. The dead Lorimas is weeping.”

Su Bai explored the forbidden Sixth Floor, where people—or something like them—snored behind the guest-room doors, and found evidence of a chained victim in an empty room. He climbed to a hidden floor above and addressed the sobbing presence behind its metal door as Lorimas.

• Su Bai heard sobbing from a hidden floor above the Sixth Floor and searched the corridor for clues.
• Su Bai found an open guest room with a shattered bathroom mirror, bloodstains, and thick iron chains beneath the beds.
• Su Bai climbed the stairs to a heavy metal door and heard sobbing and something being dragged behind it.
• A woman behind the door asked who was outside, and Su Bai told Lorimas that he had come to find her.

Su Bai spoke with Lorimas through the sealed door on the Sixth Floor and learned about her love for Jialan, a short-lived man who had left the hotel. Lorimas revealed that Cheng Xun was experimenting on her to create a drug to extend Jialan’s lifespan.

• Su Bai approached the locked door and Lorimas recognized that he was not the person she expected, then wondered if Jialan had sent him.
• Lorimas said she had left her long-lived people for Jialan and believed no one else could love her.
• Su Bai learned that Jialan cared about the difference between their lifespans and might have left after discovering Lorimas’s origins.
• Lorimas panicked when Su Bai offered to find Jialan, pleading with him not to let Jialan see her yet.
• Lorimas asked Su Bai to take Jialan a lifespan-extending drug if it was developed, and named Cheng Xun as the man conducting experiments on her.

Cheng Xun argued that the notebook’s warnings about the hotel’s food could not be trusted, citing his own experience eating meat at the Buffet Restaurant. To convince the other players, he and Peng Zhen prepared to eat the restaurant’s meat and drink water from the Bar.

• Cheng Xun said the notebook and the printed rules could not establish what was true, and revealed that he, Peng Zhen, and other teammates had eaten meat at the Buffet Restaurant the previous evening.
• Lian Xiangyu recalled the notebook’s account of players eating food from the hotel and the author’s final blood-written warning about what they had eaten.
• Cheng Xun and Peng Zhen decided to demonstrate that the hotel’s food and drink were safe by consuming them in front of the players.
• Cheng Xun returned from the Bar carrying four glasses of water, followed by an oddly walking teammate carrying a basin of braised pork.

Cheng Xun and Peng Zhen ate the hotel’s braised pork and drank the Bar’s water to test the notebook’s warnings, but Zhu Nian’s panic exposed a possible deception between them. On the hidden level of the Sixth Floor, Su Bai learned that Lorimas wanted him to stay until Cheng Xun’s final experiment was complete, and asked her what she wanted for herself.

• Cheng Xun and Peng Zhen drank water from the Bar and ate braised pork while Lian Xiangyu watched in disbelief.
• Cheng Xun offered more pork to other Players, and Shen Dong'er pushed Zhu Nian forward as another taste tester.
• Zhu Nian panicked at the pork and shouted that Cheng Xun and Peng Zhen had promised she would not have to eat it, prompting the Players to back away from them.
• Su Bai told Lorimas he could help look for Jialan but could not take medicine with him, and Lorimas urgently asked him to stay at the hotel.
• Su Bai asked Lorimas what she wanted for herself after hearing that everything she had done was for Jialan.

Su Bai questioned Lorimas about the hotel’s experiments and learned that Jialan had imprisoned her to research a life-extending drug before Cheng Xun and Peng Zhen arrived. Lorimas revealed that Cheng Xun’s final experiment involved a powerful test subject, leaving Su Bai determined to stop him and his accomplices.

• Su Bai realized that Jialan, not Cheng Xun or Peng Zhen, had first imprisoned Lorimas to help research a drug that could extend life.
• Su Bai asked whether Lorimas had powers like the Administrator’s, and she said she had only brought people to a place they were supposed to go elsewhere.
• Lorimas apologized without explaining whom she was apologizing to, and Su Bai decided it was not yet time to lay her to rest.
• Lorimas told Su Bai that Cheng Xun believed his final experiment would succeed because they had chosen a powerful test subject with great potential.
• Su Bai thought of Lian Xiangyu and Zhu Nian and resolved to eliminate Cheng Xun and his accomplices.

Su Bai discovered a chained prisoner on the Sixth Floor covered in scales and grotesque growths, then returned to the lobby as the Players confronted Cheng Xun over his experiments. The chapter ended with Cheng Xun admitting that he had fed the group ordinary restaurant meat while making an injured teammate believe he had eaten human flesh.

• Lorimas asked Su Bai his name and remarked that the hotel’s white roses had turned red, prompting him to wonder how she knew.
• Su Bai heard a prisoner begging to be killed, burned open a locked Sixth Floor room, and saw a chained person covered in scales and fleshy growths.
• Su Bai left the prisoner, resolved to return after dealing with the hotel’s crisis, and noticed that the hotel badge showed waves and scales rather than roses.
• Su Bai descended to the lobby and found the Players split between Lian Xiangyu and Cheng Xun, with Peng Zhen backing Cheng Xun.
• Lian Xiangyu and Shen Dong'er accused Cheng Xun of cutting flesh from a teammate and feeding it to the group, but Cheng Xun said the meat had been ordinary restaurant food.
• The injured teammate, who had believed he had eaten his own flesh, called Cheng Xun a liar and a lunatic.

Su Bai confronted Cheng Xun’s group after discovering the horrors on the hotel’s Sixth Floor, while the players pieced together that Cheng Xun was using them as test subjects in an experiment with the hotel’s meat and water. Cheng Xun claimed the hotel could shelter them from the Nightmare World, but a report that someone had broken into the Sixth Floor interrupted him.

• Su Bai controlled his anger as Cheng Xun’s accomplices dragged away Zhu Nian and another terrified player, who feared becoming like the former test subjects.
• Cheng Xun admitted he had changed the meat-cooking method and Bar water formula, claiming the players might gain benefits from consuming them.
• Shen Dong'er inferred that Cheng Xun was experimenting on the players, and Lian Xiangyu confronted him while readying his tiger-like ability.
• Cheng Xun revealed he had stayed in the hotel for a year and declared that everyone there had to join his experiment.
• A player rushed downstairs and reported that someone had broken into the Sixth Floor and burned through its locks and a guest-room lock.

Su Bai overheard Cheng Xun and Peng Zhen reveal their control over the hotel’s Dolls and their experiments as they investigated an intruder on the Sixth Floor. After Lian Xiangyu spotted Su Bai at the stairwell and Cheng Xun ordered it checked, Lian Xiangyu attacked Cheng Xun.

• A subordinate reported that someone had broken into the Sixth Floor and melted two locks, while Cheng Xun and the Players remained locked in a standoff.
• Cheng Xun ruled out the sedated prisoners and Peng Zhen dismissed the original waiter Dolls, then explained that Lorimas controlled the unfamiliar waiters to monitor the hotel.
• Su Bai realized that Lorimas had concealed his presence from the hotel’s surveillance Dolls.
• Lian Xiangyu spotted Su Bai at the stairwell, but Cheng Xun turned to find it empty and ordered Zhang Li to investigate.
• Lian Xiangyu suddenly launched his beastified fist at Cheng Xun.

Lian Xiangyu’s punch sparked a riot in the Lorimaris Hotel, giving him and Shen Dong’er a chance to head upstairs after Number Eight. They took Zhu Nian with them as a bound guide, while Cheng Xun watched them leave without intervening.

• Peng Zhen took Lian Xiangyu’s punch while shielding Cheng Xun, and the strike triggered a riot in the lobby.
• Players rushed out into the garden or fought Cheng Xun’s remaining subordinates as Lian Xiangyu ran toward the stairs to find Number Eight.
• Shen Dong’er followed Lian Xiangyu and hauled Zhu Nian along after she begged not to be left behind.
• Cheng Xun helped Peng Zhen up and watched the three leave without trying to stop them.
• At the stairs, Shen Dong’er tied Zhu Nian’s hands and threatened her into sharing what she knew about escaping the hotel.

Shen Dong'er, Lian Xiangyu, and Zhu Nian hid in the Fifth Floor Infirmary while Cheng Xun's people searched for them. Zhu Nian revealed that Cheng Xun sought immortality because his self-healing ability consumed his lifespan.

• Lian Xiangyu led Shen Dong'er and Zhu Nian into the Fifth Floor Infirmary to avoid Cheng Xun's approaching people.
• Lian Xiangyu said he believed Number Eight had met his eyes in the stairwell, but Shen Dong'er warned him that his fixation on the doll might be distorting his judgment.
• Shen Dong'er questioned Zhu Nian about what she knew of Cheng Xun's plans.
• Zhu Nian explained that Cheng Xun wanted medicine to extend life and that his self-healing ability made him age whenever he used it.

Zhu Nian explained that Cheng Xun used players as test subjects for an elixir of immortality, while Lorimas allowed his experiments and controlled the hotel. She described the subjects’ deaths and suffering, including a surviving player who became a fish-scaled monster, but left Lorimas’s identity unclear.

• Zhu Nian explained that Cheng Xun’s self-healing made him age faster when he was badly injured, and that he sought an elixir of immortality.
• Zhu Nian said Cheng Xun used players as test subjects and that Lorimas had controlled the hotel and supported his experiments from the beginning.
• Zhu Nian described how subjects died, suffered in chains on the Sixth Floor, or were buried beneath the garden’s roses.
• Zhu Nian revealed that a player who survived the meat developed scales and tumors and became a monster that could not die.
• Shen Dong'er pressed Zhu Nian for an explanation of Lorimas, but Zhu Nian had not yet clarified who she was.